Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

Rena's Promise (47 page)

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out the window of our block; the landscape is spotted with puffs of gray smoke and black cinders drifting up over the SS offices. For the first time since the beginning of our horror, the air smells like burning paper rather than burning flesh.

We wait through the day, putting our extra clothes on, changing our boots so that we are ready. This is almost as bad as being in quarantine. We have no clue as to what will happen to us, but at least it will be different. We're going to leave Auschwitz-Birkenau, despite our fear. There is a sense of anticipation for the unknown, but still the dread hangs over us. We do not know when, but we know that soon they will come in and say, March out! We are too tense to sleep. All day we wait. We try to rest. I clean my fingernails eight times.

''What time is it, Rena?" Danka asks from our bunk.

"Two o'clock."

"Where's the soup? They're late."

"They won't feed us today." A voice comes down from the bed above us.

"Why not?"

"They're saving the food for themselves." We're nothing but cover against the Russians, and expendable. They're not going to waste something as precious as food on us. We wait. We rest. It grows dark outside. No one brings our evening bread. Our block elder is agitated; she will have to march with the rest of us. Danka dozes. My eyes grow heavy, then jerk open; I'm afraid I'll miss something. The lights are still on in our block. There is stamping outside.

"
Raus! Raus!
"

We line up outside the block just as we always have. The SS count us and then give the orders. "March out!"

I look down at my watch. It is exactly one o'clock in the morning. It is January 18, 1945. We step outside the gates.

There are thousands of people before us. Bonfires speckle the

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landscape. Tramping through the well-packed snow, we march in neat rows of five, orderly to the end, leaving behind us the iron curse
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
: the words are branded on our souls. It is snowing. The blizzard has arrived. Is this for life or is it for death?

We are the only women on the road, but there are men's bodies scattered across our path. Tramping and tramping, our legs ache with fatigue yet move as if they were mechanical. Stepping over bodies already covered with snow, we march for an hour, maybe two, before we are herded into a barn. Are the Russians near? Is freedom here? We collapse in the straw for a brief respite. Sleep is dark, dreamless.

"
Raus! Raus!
" We get up stiffly. A few do not wake. They are prodded, then shot. The snowdrifts are knee-deep and the wind is picking up; still, we do not have to break the trail as the men before us did. The sun rises in an overcast sky. It is a gray day. Our flesh is gray. Tramp, tramp; we step over three and four bodies at one time. Gunshots come from in front of us and in back of us, in front of us and in back of us. We're so numb to it that the bullets feel as if they're in our own heads. The snow is endless. It does not stall or slow down, it falls in sheets. I have blisters on my feet which would hurt more if my feet weren't so cold. When we stop for rest periods there is no food. We ration what food we brought with us; it is disappearing fast. The bread will be gone tomorrow and the sugar is too low. We eat snow.

"Why don't I take one of the bags of sugar, Mania? So you don't have so much to carry."

"I only have one bag left."

"How can it all be gone?"

"We've eaten it." She dares me to question her. I don't believe her but am too weak to argue. If we starve because of her selfishness, it will be on her head.

We tramp through white and red snow. We lurch over bodies. We stop. In a barn, the six of us divide up the last of our bread and

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sugar. I'm so tired. It feels as if tomorrow will be the end for me. I wonder if I shouldn't just give up. It is almost as if I am hearing voices in my head while I lean against the thin barn wall. I stop my musing, listening for a familiar sound. Then I hear ita family speaking Polish in the farmhouse connected to the barn. Their door is ajar. The voices tug at me, drawing me to them. I must go see these people who were my people before this war. The SS guards are outside.

I slip up to the kitchen, my knuckle raps at the door. "I am sorry to bother you," I say in Polish, "but I have a sister and we're both very hungry. We're from Tylicz. If you can spare one potato I'll give her half. If you give me two I'll take one."

I hear the husband say, "We don't have enough to spare!"

"She's from Tylicz!" the wife exclaims. The family discusses this briefly. Not wanting to endanger them, I wait outside, catching bits and pieces of their conversation. The door opens a crack. A ray of warm, golden light drifts across my face. The wife's eyes are moist with worry and fear. "Take these." She hands me two hard-boiled eggs and two cooked potatoes. I hold them in my hands, letting the warmth seep into my skin and the smell waft up to my nostrils.

.
Bóg zaplac

*. May God reward you for this favor." I back away from the door. "I will never forget you." That night we eat.

I do not know how long we have been walking, or how far. I cannot remember how many times the sky has grown light and then dark, how many times my watch has done twenty-four revolutions, or how many barns we have collapsed in. We could have been walking for one day or ten. I do not know, I do not care. I am so sick I want to die. I have such terrible diarrhea that I run to the outhouse without asking. The SS must be tired of shooting people, because they haven't shot me yet for leaving the barn

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without permission. I try to sleep through the night, but we are freezing and my stomach is empty.

''
Raus! Raus!
" I get up and go to the outhouse. I am going to stay there. They have shot girls for trying to hide and escape, but I don't care anymore. I listen to the SS lining everyone up, leaning my head on my hands because I am too weak to hold my head up any longer.

I hear someone outside the door. I am going to be shot. It will be a relief. I wait.

"Rena." I hear Danka's voice outside the door.

I pull my pants up and tie them tight but fall back down on the seat, unable to stand up.

"Rena, what're you doing?" She opens the door.

"Go on without me," I tell her. "I'm staying here."

"No, you're not. You're coming with me."

"I can't walk, Danka . . . save yourself."

"Look at those bodies. Look at all those who are dead, but were still alive. You're not going to die now. I'm not going to let you! Janka!" I can hear the tremor in her voice. She is so brave. "Come help me." I unlatch the door. I cannot look in my sister's face. I wait for their hands to hoist me up between them. We stumble into formation.

Mustering all the strength and courage in the world, with Danka and Janka supporting my elbows, I tramp through the snow again. We walk forever. The sun comes up cold against the barren landscape. Their hands are firm under my elbows. We walk as if there were nothing wrong with me. It is forever. Then, suddenly, my strength comes back.

"I can stand on my own two feet now." I manage to whisper.

"Are you sure?" I nod. Janka lets go first. I do not stumble. Slowly Danka releases her hold on me. I walk. It is a miracle. I am better.

For hours we tramp over bodies, through snow. Gunshots fell those of us who are too weak to continue and those of us still

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trying to escape. Do I wish that we had stayed in Auschwitz-Birkenau? Despite the cold, the hunger, no. I am glad that we will not die behind that sign, behind Hades' gates. We could be walking in circles the way the path is strewn with bodies; they all look the same, frozen, desperate. Free.

We arrive at a train depot.

"Get into the coal cars," they order. We can barely get in without help, but there is no help. Everyone is exhausted and too weak to climb into the empty cars. I help Danka in, who helps Dina, and so on; everyone has just enough strength to help one other person. We lean in the corner, finally able to rest. Then we start to shiver. The cold bares its fangs and digs into our flesh. I don't want to sit down because of the soot, but that concern does not last long. Overcome by fatigue, I collapse with the others onto the black, dirty floor.
¹⁰

Air raid sirens begin to wail and planes come swooping overhead as the SS and German people run into the railway station, leaving us outside. We huddle in the cars hoping the bombs will not kill ushoping this ordeal will end. We pass out despite the sounds of war overhead.

Quiet.

I stir and crawl up the side of the car to look out at the people just starting to return to the platform. A lady holding her infant stands nearby. "Please, can you hand me some clean snow from the ground?" I ask in German. "We are so thirsty and the snow is too dirty up here to eat."

Her eyes register fear as she looks at the SS with their guns. She looks at her baby, shaking her head. I understand. The snow

10. "Columns arrive by foot in Wodzislaw in Silesia. From there they are taken to Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg [Germany] in open freight cars, which normally are used for transporting coal. Almost half of the prisoners die on the way of hunger, of exhaustion from the long march, and of freezing" (Czech, 789). "Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Those troops found about 7,000 sick and exhausted prisoners4,000 of them women" (Rittner and Roth, 14).

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